The indictment made public Tuesday accuses four men of funneling about $100,000 to an All-American high school player from May until of September 2017 to assist one or more coaches at the university in recruiting the player.

The indictment made public Tuesday accuses four men of funneling about $100,000 to an All-American high school player from May until of September 2017 to assist one or more coaches at the university in recruiting the player.

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J. (AP) -- Two New Jersey men who talked about attacking Americans and sought to fight alongside terrorists in Somalia were arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport as they tried to leave the U.S. and join the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadists, authorities said.

Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 26, were arrested Saturday before they could board separate flights to Egypt and then continue on to Somalia, federal officials in New Jersey and the New York Police Department said.

They had been under investigation since 2006. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said they had traveled to Jordan in 2007 and tried to get into Iraq, but were turned back by their would-be recruiters.

During the lengthy investigation, an NYPD undercover officer recorded conversations with the men in which they spoke about jihad against Americans.

"I leave this time. God willing, I never come back," authorities say Alessa told the officer last year. "Only way I would come back here is if I was in the land of jihad and the leader ordered me to come back here and do something here. Ah, I love that."

Alessa also was allegedly recorded telling Almonte that he would outdo Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year.

"He's not better than me. I'll do twice what he did," Alessa allegedly said.

Kelly said Alessa, of North Bergen, and Almonte, of Elmwood Park, are American citizens. Alessa was born in the United States and is of Palestinian descent. Almonte is a naturalized citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic.

They are the latest of many Americans or immigrants to the U.S. accused of joining or trying to join al-Shabab, a violent extremist group based in Somalia and connected to al-Qaida. Al Shabab was designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group in 2008.

Investigators say they're also among many U.S. terrorism suspects to have been inspired by two well-known U.S. citizens who have recruited terrorists through the Internet: Anwar al Awlaki, who helped inspire recent attacks including the Fort Hood shooting and the failed Christmas Day airline boming, and Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesman in Pakistan.

Both men have made public calls for smaller, single acts of terrorism and court documents show Alessa and Almonte appearing to be inspired by that idea.

Alessa and Almonte face charges of conspiring to kill, maim, and kidnap persons outside the United States by joining al-Shabab. Teams of state and federal law enforcement agents who have been investigating the men took them into custody, authorities said.

They are scheduled to appear Monday in federal court in Newark. Kelly on Sunday cited the "excellent work" done by the undercover officer, who Kelly said was of Egyptian descent and in his mid-20s. The officer joined the department in 2005.

A person who answered the phone at Alessa's home hung up.

No one answered the door at Almonte's house and the blinds were drawn. A man who said he was Almonte's father walked into the home shortly before 1 p.m. with another man.

"I'm very confused by all this. He's my son," he said before he went inside. "I just don't understand it."

David Castro, 56, of Elmwood Park, is an Army reservist who lives across the street from Almonte. He said he doesn't know the suspect but knows his father and described the family as friendly.

Terrorists' recruiting techniques "almost seem better than the U.S. Army," Castro said. "This is happening not just in bad neighborhoods. This is happening in good neighborhoods like this one."

While court documents paint a picture of two men deeply committed to terrorism, their training was apparently scattershot. They lifted weights, hiked in the snow at a local park, bought military-style pants and water bottles, played violent video games and watched terrorist videos online.

The men said they planned to get weapons when they went abroad. The only weapons they possessed were two folding knives Alessa said he would use to kill police if they tried to get near him: "I'm-a cut them in half with it, even if I die," Alessa said, according to court documents.

Alessa and Almonte had planned their trip to Somalia for several months, saving thousands of dollars, officials said. Both had bragged about wanting to wage holy war against the United States both at home and internationally, according to a criminal complaint.

Officials said the two men were not planning an imminent attack in the New York-New Jersey area.

A neighbor of Alessa's, Helen Gonyou, said Alessa was attending school and lived with his parents but that she had not seen him in a while. They are good neighbors, she said, adding that she regularly exchanged pleasantries with Alessa's father.

She cautioned against prejudgment and called the charges an "unfortunate set of circumstances."

"I just have to hope that if the case is true, they caught them before they could do bodily harm to anyone," she said.

The planned trip to Somalia was not the men's first attempt at joining a radical group, according to court documents. Almonte told the undercover agent that three years ago, they traveled to Jordan to try to be recruited with holy warriors and were upset when their contacts refused to recruit them.

Last November, investigators recorded Alessa telling Almonte that lots of people needed to be killed.

"My soul cannot rest until I shed blood," Alessa said, according to court documents. "I wanna, like, be the world's known terrorist."

Almonte told the undercover officer in April that there would soon be American troops in Somalia, which he allegedly said was good because it would not be as gratifying to kill only Africans.

Somalia, an impoverished East African nation of about 10 million people, has not had a functioning government for more than a decade, although the U.S. is backing a transitional government there. The Pentagon's top commander in the region has included Somalia on a list of countries where clandestine American military operations designed to disrupt militant groups would be targeted.

Over the past year, a number of Somali youths have traveled from the U.S. back to Somalia to fight with al-Shabab insurgents. At the same time, battle-hardened al-Qaida insurgents have moved out of safe havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border into Somalia, where vast ungoverned spaces allow them to train and mobilize recruits without interference.

U.S. authorities, including the FBI, have been working with Somali diasporas, including a large community in Minnesota, to stem the radicalization of young people who are being recruited to join the terror fight.

Officials are concerned that such radicalized Somalis who are U.S. citizens may be able to move more freely in and out of the U.S., presenting a threat that would be harder to detect and prevent.

Somalia welcomed the arrests of Alessa and Almonte.

"Foreign terrorists here are an obstacle to lasting peace in Somalia. So we welcome the move and we are calling on all governments to take such steps against al-Shabab and all terrorists at large," said Sheik Abdirisaq Mohamed Qaylow, a spokesman for the Ministry of Information.